Category: Natural History

Since I moved to Alaska and learned about the state’s Pleistocene history, I’ve bemoaned the absence of the ice-age mega-megafauna. Here in the interior, 20,000 years ago, mammoths, wooly rhinoceros, giant ground sloths, Smilodon, dire wolves, short-faced bears, American lions, and other now sadly absent animals, roamed. While a few ice-age mammals persist (think musk oxen, bison, and moose), most…

Each morning for the past couple of weeks, I’ve stepped out onto my porch, stood and listened. Spring migration is just getting underway and I like to keep track of the new arrivals in my yard. The first migrant appeared ten or so days ago. It was a Ruby-crowned Kinglet, followed in the next days by American Robins, Dark-eyed Juncos,…

Driving into Fairbanks on Saturday morning, Amy and were passing along the experimental agricultural fields managed by the University of Alaska. From the window of the car, Amy spotted a Coyote walking through the snow near a pond of melt-water. Though I’ve seen their tracks along the trails, and even through my property north of town, I hadn’t laid eyes…

On my photography blog, rarely updated, I have a tradition of posting my top 100 images of the previous year. This year, I decided to mix that up a bit by creating a video with some of my favorite images and video clips from my various adventures of 2015. I decided I’d share it here. Enjoy, and feel free to…

You’ll have to pardon me if this piece feels like a bit of a tangent, it might well be. You see, I’ve been thinking a lot about natural history, what it is, and how it has changed. I’ve been angered by the way the study of natural history has been relegated to the bottom rung of the scientific ladder. In…